Various plants for the treatment of containers are known from the prior art. In this way, filling means are known which fill containers, such as for example bottles of plastics material or glass, with liquids. In addition, so-called blow moulding machines or stretch blow moulding machines, which shape plastics material pre-forms into plastics material containers, are also known.
In this way, for example, EP 1 471 008 A1 describes a method and a system for monitoring a packing or bottling procedure. In this case first data information is detected which identifies the packing or a packing material used for forming the packing as well as second data information which is used for describing machine parts.
In addition, a container-treatment plant, which has a detection device for detecting properties of a container to be treated, as well as a comparator device for comparing the detection result of the detection device with a nominal container value, is known from the as yet unpublished Patent Application No. 10 2009 040 977.7 of the Applicants. The subject matter of this disclosure is hereby also made the subject matter of the following description in its entirety by reference.
In particular, when changing the programmes of machines in the beverage industry to a different type, for example to a new type of bottle, this is usually carried out on the machine by the operator or setter. In this case a type previously set up (which is available as a set of data) is selected in the menu and loaded. A set of data of this type contains for example mechanical setting values on the machine which the operator sees displayed for the change-over.
It is also known to manage the types of the individual machines centrally with a superordinated type management for example in an LMS (line-management-system) and to transfer them to machines involved in each case in accordance with a pending production order.
In this case, however, the problem arises that even the materials used influence the parameter settings on the machine in situ. If, for example, a plastics material pre-form with different material properties, for example with additives for the bonding of oxygen in the beverage, experience shows that this has an influence upon the setting of the heating and thus upon the heating parameters on the blow moulding machine. In addition, the nature of the surface of the bottle (roughness or coefficient of friction) can be affected and, as a result, the behaviour of the container during the processing in a labelling machine or in the inlet to a packing means can change. Experience also shows that the apparently similar materials of different manufacturers can behave very differently. The causes may be the manufacturing process used by the manufacturer for example for the plastics material pre-form, the process times set or other parameters.
As a result of this, a manual adjustment of the machine parameters used is required on the machines in a bottling plant. This adjustment causes losses in the form of machine stoppage times for the new settings required, losses in quality and thus loss of product and packaging material etc.
On the other hand, in most bottling plants it is not only one type of product that is produced. These plants are in fact designed in such a way that only one type is in production at any one point in time, but it is possible to change over to a different type in a simple manner. In this case the number of different types of production and the time intervals between changes can vary very greatly.
The types of production themselves comprise many categories, such as for example the package format, the package colour, the container format, the container colour, the nature and the decoration of the closure or even the number, the format and the decoration of the labels on the containers. In this case it is not necessary for all the machines of a plant or the parameters thereof to be dependent upon all the categories. In practice there is frequently a very large number of equipment variants, particularly in the case of labelling machines. In this case, in particular, the categories of the container format, the closure format and the provision of labels are relevant. The provision of labels can in turn be divided into subcategories, such as for example the usable volume, the product and country-specific contents.
If a conversion to a different type has to be carried out in the prior art, therefore, the production staff have to set the previously configured production type of the machine as well as mechanical conversion operations. This can be carried out for example by a superordinated master control (SCADA, MES) or directly at the machine operation. The selection from a list on a touch-screen display has become established as the usual manner for this input.
If, however, the number of types of production is very large (for example if the number of different provisions in a labelling machine frequently amounts in practice to several hundreds) then experience shows that the type is also changed within relatively short time intervals. In this case the selection from a list is confusing, time-consuming and prone to errors for the operating staff. Since the types differ in part in only one criterion, the texts of the type designators are frequently long and very similar. In every case only a small portion of the list is visible at any one time through the restricted area of the display, and the remaining parts must be shown in a laborious manner by scrolling through the list.
In this way, erroneous settings frequently occur, in which the user inadvertently selects an incorrect product or a different product is produced at least for a short time instead of the product actually provided. It may therefore be desirable to facilitate changes of type during the manufacture of containers and, in particular, beverage containers.